Hugo Chavez, president of Venezeula, won a fourth term. Compared with his previous elections, he had a tighter race. However, like U.S. presidents should do and never do, Chavez should consider that he did not receive the support of the majority of voters.
The turnout was about 80%, far higher than any one state in the U.S. ever got recently and Chavez received about 55% of that. In other words, only 44% of the voters turned out to support Chavez and 56% of the voters either supported someone else or didn't care.
Consider that the turnout in U.S. elections has not been over 60% since 1972. For Reagan's "landslide" in 1984 the turnout was 53.11%. Reagan had 58.77% of the votes cast, which means that he had the support of only 31.2% of the voting age population. In percent of votes cast, Reagan did better than Chavez, but in the support of all the people Reagan didn't fare as well.
The lesson for every election is that those who show up determine the results. Too often elections are given away by those who aren't completely satisfied with the losing candidate.
